RC1 DVDs in germany?

[ultimatebilly]

Does anybody know how to get RC1 DVDs cheap in germany? I know some sites where you can check which store (online or offline) has the cheapest DVDs. Can somebody give me a link for a page that offers the same service for RC1 DVDs? How can I avoid the high shipping fees? In germany there are some stores which offers RC1 DVDs, but they usually cost more than 40 €!!!!!

[ultimatebilly]

Please excuse that I'm replying to my own post! Just forgot something:
I heard that australian DVDs often have german audio tracks and are PAL?! Maybe it is cheaper to order DVDs from australia than from the US? Anybody has experience with that?

[smiller667]

Relax ... and cut back on those exclamation marks :) ... for R1 DVDs, go to www.dvdpricesearch.com, specify the country where you reside, and they will find the cheapest (inluding postage) online retailer for you.
Beware that most of these shipments will incur customs and taxes ... i.e. up to 20% on the total value of the package (yes, including shipping). Some people claim that DHL shipments are less likely to be intercepted by customs ...
Thus, the Canadian e-tailer www.dvdboxoffice.com might be worth considering - their prices are higher but they include shipping plus for me they always shipped from France or other countries not subject to EU taxes and customs.
www.play.com (a Channel island merchant) also carries R1 DVDs and they have always been tax-free for me ... their prices also include shipping. Apparently there are a few similar shops in Jersey and similar places.
Some Australian (R4) releases include all sorts of European language subs, among them German ... visit www.ezdvd.com.au for information and/or www.michaeldvd.com.au for comparisons between R4 and R1 releases. R4 is PAL country, too, if that is of any interest to you.
For more information, you might want to visit www.dvdboard.de and its forum, they are probably the people to ask for up-to-date details regarding shipments to Germany.
Enjoy ... and be careful with that credit card :D.

[tenebrenz]

Personally, I mostly use play.com for R1 discs and have had about 40 over the last year from them, they send their R1 stock via Belgium. There is futureent.com (uk based) which I have recently started using, they generally offer cheaper prices than play and offer free shipping thoughout Europe, including all taxes.
Many R4 discs are identical to the European discs (hence the Euro-languages) especially titles from Warner, MGM, Fox, these titles are usually dual R2 + R4 as they use the same masters for both areas. I use ezydvd.com.au and dvdcrave.com both have good prices and quick (&cheap) delivery of about 3 days.
With these companies I have never had any problems or custom's charges so far(touch wood), so don't delay and get shopping :)

[ultimatebilly]

Cool!!
Thank you very much!
Now I dont have to rob banks anymore :)

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by ultimatebilly In germany there are some stores which offers RC1 DVDs, but they usually cost more than 40 €!!!!! ... just out of curiosity, why would anybody living in Germany want R1 DVDs ? I'd undertstand the other way around, means a ripper in the US looking for R 2 DVDs to overcome the stupid iVTC ( most R2 have english sound also ), but what do you need R 1 DVds for ? Is your TV NTSC and cant read R 2 ? Or do you really believe you get the R 1 cheaper ( note you will never be able to sell them 2nd hand in Europe, so what is a 2 € saving really worth ? ) ?

[Ookami]

> ... just out of curiosity, why would anybody living in Germany want R1 DVDs

A few things (this applies,sadly, to way too many DVDs):

-earlier release
-more features
-uncutted

and so on.

I'm not living in Germany but I have bought a few R1 DVDs :) .

Cheers,

Mijo.

[tenebrenz]

@ Christian
I'm not German but I guess Germans often want R1 discs for the same reasons as me. Ideally I would rather buy Pal because of it's progressive nature and higher resolution but here are my reasons:
1) There are far more titles available in America compared to over here. This is the biggest point as I collect movies which are generally not mainstream.
2) There are some very good American companies that work hard at bringing us complete and remastered widescreen versions of films, Anchor Bay and Criterion to name a couple.
3) Censorship, the UK and Germany has censorship systems which often stops films being released uncut or deters the distributor from releasing it uncut as it won't sell as well. Often titles are cut in the UK so they will recieve a lower rating, a lower rating means a potentially larger audience and more profit. I heard before that Germany has a system "FSK" where films rated 18 aren't available on the shop shelves, I know they aren't available at Amazon.de cos I looked. So often an FSK16 version is released with some parts missing.
4) Titles are released sometimes a long time before here.
5) Language, for and against here. English language films generally only have French or Spanish dubbed sountracks and a lack of subtitles compared to Euro releases but when it is a foreign language film they do try to include this as well as the English dubbed version. Often foreign language films in the UK only have their dubbed soundtrack included, I think the same is true for Germany as well.
6) Price, this varies but there are some bargains to be had across the Atlantic especially if buying from Play or something.
In the end, for me, it varies from title to title. When I want to buy a film I browse the various e-tailers from America, Australia, Germany, France, etc and choose the version which seems to be the best.

[tenebrenz]

While I spent 20 minutes writing all that Ookami wrote a good answer in very few words, lol.

[ultimatebilly]

I can just make one addition:

I personally have no experience with RC1-DVDs, but I heard, that RC1-DVDs have better quality, due to the fact, that we in germany get film-copies that are several generations older than the american ones, so the DVDs that are scanned from these have worse quality than the american ones.
I think the copies the american DVDs are made of are of the first or second generation, where the copies we start with are in the best case 3th generation, which are copied for the cinemas here (so you may see copies of the 4th or 5th generation in the cinemas!). But I'm not sure how this is handled exactly.

[ProfDrMorph]

Originally posted by tenebrenz

3) Censorship, the UK and Germany has censorship systems which often stops films being released uncut or deters the distributor from releasing it uncut as it won't sell as well. Often titles are cut in the UK so they will recieve a lower rating, a lower rating means a potentially larger audience and more profit. I heard before that Germany has a system "FSK" where films rated 18 aren't available on the shop shelves, I know they aren't available at Amazon.de cos I looked. So often an FSK16 version is released with some parts missing.
That's only half true. There is no censorship in Germany. A movie which is rated 18 by the FSK CAN be on the shop shelves. Above being rated 18 there are two other levels of rating. One means the advertisement and open selling ( putting it on the shelves ) isn't allowed and only adults ( 18+ years old ) who show their pass port may buy these movies ( this law also applies to other media ). The highest level actually means that they aren't allowed to sell it at all. This only happens if the content is e.g. racistic. Titles like "Hitler-test" and "Anti-nigger-test" speak for themselves I think. These are games which are rated on the highest level.

Until now the institution ( the BPjM; former: BPjS ) which said if a medium has be rated on one of the two highest levels wasn't allowed to get active themselves but they had to wait until another institution told them to do so. Otherwise you could call it censorship but I read that they want to change this now so that the BPjM can get active by themselves.

I could get into much more detail now but I think this is already enough to give you a image of the system here in Germany. The problem is that the usual age restrictions FSK ( or USK for computer/video games ) isn't enforced by law but everybody ( even the ones who sell games/movies/etc ) is free to ignore these "restrictions".

[MvB]

just out of curiosity, why would anybody living in Germany want R1 DVDs

To all the reasons given above, there is a reason (for me), that is more important than all the others: PAL DVDs are running too fast. If you compare the scenes running at 23.976 against scenes that run at 25 FPS, you see that alle the characters in a movie sound strange. You won't notice a big part of the accentuation and feelings in the voices anymore. Because of this reason I always slow down PAL DVD while converting to SVCD or divx. But if I want to see a DVD at nearly correct speed, I have to buy the R1 Version.

[tenebrenz]

@ProfDrMorph
I stand corrected, I assumed that the age limits were "law." Here it is very silly as it is illegal for a shop to sell a title like Robocop to someone under 18 but everyone has seen it on TV by the time they're 9 or 10 and it is illegal for a shop to sell a movie that hasn't been rated.

[Triggerle]

Originally posted by ProfDrMorph

That's only half true. There is no censorship in Germany. A movie which is rated 18 by the FSK CAN be on the shop shelves. Above being rated 18 there are two other levels of rating. One means the advertisement and open selling ( putting it on the shelves ) isn't allowed and only adults ( 18+ years old ) who show their pass port may buy these movies ( this law also applies to other media ). The highest level actually means that they aren't allowed to sell it at all. This only happens if the content is e.g. racistic. Titles like "Hitler-test" and "Anti-nigger-test" speak for themselves I think. These are games which are rated on the highest level.
(...)
While you are right that there's almost no government censorship for mainstream movies in Germany, there's still the issue of "self-censorship".
Almost all of the movies containing violence are cut by the studios themselves before release in Germany. This is to avoid problems with the authorities in Germany or to get a lower age-rating.
For almost every Film you can notice missing scenes in the German release. (Sometimes up to 20 minutes)

Triggerle

[ProfDrMorph]

hehe "Self-Censorship" is another story but I have to agree that we have this "problem" here in Germany.

[Zhnujm]

just for interest, can you tell me some movies wich are cut so much, Triggerle ?

[MvB]

@Zhnujm

A lot movies like Star Trek NG Episode 25, i think, Dune, Star Trek: The undiscovered country etc. to talk about some movies that are non violent.

MvB

[Ceronian]

@Zhnujm
From Dusk Till Dawn (17 min)
Blade (11 min)

I agree, short list but a few obvious examples.

[Zhnujm]

"From Dusk till Dawn" is also available as FSK18 with the missing 17min ;)
i will have a closer look at the other movies
thanks

[theReal]

Unfortunately, the FSK18 version of "From Dusk til Dawn" is one of the very unfortunate releases with only German-dubbed audio. Just like the FSK18 version of "Hannibal"

It's a pity... the original language plus a lot of subtitles is what really makes a DVD special. Otherwise, I could just d/l a divx from DC (would even be better, because it had the original audio as the only audio-track!)

[Ceronian]

Originally posted by theReal
Unfortunately, the FSK18 version of "From Dusk til Dawn" is one of the very unfortunate releases with only German-dubbed audio.
Really? The DVD includes an english dd5.1 stream, but you're not allowed to disable the german subtitles.

[Zhnujm]

Originally posted by Ceronian

but you're not allowed to disable the german subtitles.

thats a good reason for dvd-ripping :D

[WitzWolf]

Actually you are allowed to disable the subtitles but technically you can't. I haven't seen a standalone or software player that could do this :)
And yes, that's a great reason for ripping! :)

Concerning the missing english audio track on FDTD. Did you check if it's the rental version? Many rental versions (Dracula 2000, Amelie, Autumn in New York) lack the original audio and some of the special features, you can find on the sales version.

[theReal]

Oh, I mixed up some DVD's here, FDTD has all the audio and all the subtitles in the FSK18 version. Only Hannibal doesn't. It's bought from a video rental, the DVD says "for rental only, not for sale", but it was new, not used. I thought this was the only FSK18 version you could get?

The "can't turn off" subtitles are also present in "The Wall". Buena Vista Social Club has hardcoded subtitles, but it's ok, because it's 90% Spanish, and I don't speak Spanish...

[ProfDrMorph]

there is a chinese software DVD player which allows you to disable subtitles ALWAYS. It's called Hero2000 or something and the URL is www.herosoft.com if I remember correctly.

It's bought from a video rental, the DVD says "for rental only, not for sale", but it was new, not used. I thought this was the only FSK18 version you could get?
Most stores like "Media Markt" have FSK18 DVDs for sale. You just have to ask the people who work there for those movies.

[Ceronian]

Originally posted by ProfDrMorph
there is a chinese software DVD player which allows you to disable subtitles ALWAYS. It's called Hero2000 or something and the URL is www.herosoft.com if I remember correctly.
There is a modification for Sony DVD-Players available, which allows to disable the so called "User Prohibitions".

Originally posted by ProfDrMorph

Most stores like "Media Markt" have FSK18 DVDs for sale. You just have to ask the people who work there for those movies.
They sell FSK18 DVDs, right. But they sell only movies, which are not indexed...

[theReal]

Hannibal is on the index in Germany? I don't think it was that brutal. Except for the little brain surgery, maybe...